JAPAN: Soak the Rich

As long as
he lives, Japan's "greatest Secretary of the Treasury since
Korekiyo Takahashi" will always keep popping up again in the
person of that lovable, rascally old greybeard himself. In the Empire's
expensive career of wars, earthquakes, typhoons and economic
crises he remains the lucky mascot of Japanese finance. Last week he
was 80, full of chuckles and shrewd wisdom, when the Son of Heaven
gazetted him for the seventh time Minister of Finance, amid popular
roars of "Banzai Daruma!''